America
Blu-ray: Destry Rides AgainTuesday, 19 May 2020
A calculatedly nostalgia-infused town-taming Western, 1939's Destry Rides Again out-sparkled Errol Flynn's contemporaneous light “oaters" and anticipated noir-tinged classics like My Darling Clementine (1946) and The Gunfighter (1950). Because it... Read more... |
The Atom: A Love Affair review - hot fusion and cold heartsThursday, 14 May 2020
It’s fair to say that humanity’s relationship with nuclear energy over the last 50 years has had more highs and lows than a Spanish soap opera. From the Manhattan Project to Hinkley Point, it’s been a controversial technology that has promised both... Read more... |
Little Richard (1932-2020) - sexuality, spirituality and rock'n'roll's gospel rootsWednesday, 13 May 2020
The day that Little Richard’s death was announced, my friend the soul singer PP Arnold wrote on her Instagram feed, of a “sanctified boogie-woogie piano style that was just electric”. She went on, recalling first hearing the man’s undiluted... Read more... |
Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt: Kimmy vs The Reverend, Netflix review - bold, but only a partial successWednesday, 13 May 2020
Tina Fey and Robert Carlock’s hit comedy Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt (Netflix) ended its fourth series in January last year, but this belated interactive special suggested there could be new life in it yet. Summarising Unbreakable… is possible but... Read more... |
Album: Moses Sumney - græWednesday, 13 May 2020
Moses Sumney’s second album is a double, and splits and nuances in gender, sexuality and identity define its fluid nature. A 28-year-old Ghanaian-American who grew up as an outsider in both countries, Sumney is most interested in removing... Read more... |
I Know This Much Is True, Sky Atlantic review - riding a carousel of catastropheTuesday, 12 May 2020
Adapted by writer-director Derek Cianfrance from Wally Lamb’s 1998 novel, this HBO production (on Sky Atlantic) presents a huge canvas for Mark Ruffalo, who plays the twin brothers Dominick and Thomas Birdsey. He had a particular interest in I Know... Read more... |
Album: Jason Isbell and The 400 Unit - ReunionsMonday, 11 May 2020
Like his friend the late John Prine, Jason Isbell is a master storyteller. His skill, like Prine’s, is to inhabit the characters he sings about so fully, and with such empathy, that it can be difficult to tell where the songwriter ends and the story... Read more... |
Album: Mark Lanegan - Straight Songs of SorrowMonday, 04 May 2020
There are few albums as relentlessly dark as Mark Lanegan's latest: the raw and intense exploration of a tortured soul. This stuff is a few circles of hell deeper than anything Leonard Cohen ever did, and when the Canadian poet of melancholy "wanted... Read more... |
Blu-ray: Anatomy of a MurderTuesday, 28 April 2020
Justice and the truth run on parallel lines in Anatomy of a Murder. If they converge at all, which is debatable, it's not because the moral order demands it, but because the workings of the law allow for that possibility. The outcome of Otto... Read more... |
Album: Ezra Furman - Sex Education OSTThursday, 23 April 2020
Netflix’s sweet but slightly strange drama Sex Education is already two series into its tale of teenage awkwardness in the face of growing up, with a third planned for when the Covid-19 plague is over. Yet it is only now that the soundtrack is being... Read more... |
Album: Lucinda Williams - Good Souls Better AngelsWednesday, 22 April 2020
Few singers can channel bitterness, anger and pain as well as Lucinda Williams: she moves with ease from a fierce snarl to a sensual drawl, and from a naked show of vulnerability to a rocker’s raunch. As with Tom Waits, with whom she has sometimes... Read more... |
Selah and the Spades, Amazon Prime review - boarding-school cliques go gangsterSaturday, 18 April 2020
“They always try to break you down when you’re 17,” says queen bee Selah (Lovie Simone) in Tayarisha Poe’s impressive directorial debut. As leader of the Spades, one of the five Mafia-style ruling factions in the exclusive Haldwell boarding-school... Read more... |
